Just five per cent of cases reported to police are referred to the Crown Prosecution Service.
Peter Grant from Restored, which tackles violence against women, told Premier’s News Hour it’s never acceptable for these crimes to be committed.
He said: “These are basic crimes against individual human beings and I think what we must call out is the fact that no religion and no social code should be allowed to disguise the fact that these are crimes.”
The National Police Chiefs’ Council says honour based abuse is a complex crime and its priority is to safeguard vulnerable victims even where a conviction is not possible.
Grant explained why it can be hard to get these cases to court.
He said: “The reporting of cases has actually risen quite significantly – it’s gone up by over 50 per cent since 2014 so there does seem to be a problem in terms of the police addressing this.
“I think there is some evidence that police forces are not well prepared to be able to handle some of these cases. At the very basic we should see a mixture of justice and obviously compassion and support.”
The number of cases of honour based violence, forced marriage and FGM reported to the police has increased by 53 per cent since 2014, figures obtained through the Freedom of Information Act show.
HM Inspector of Constabulary Wendy Williams reviewed the situation two years ago and found so called honour killings disproportionately affect women…
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